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The news that The Boys would be ending with season five caught a lot of us off-guard, but showrunner Eric Kripke insists that was always the plan for the ultra-violent send-up of the superhero genre. Even though Kripke says he had to convince Amazon Prime to let the show end as he planned, he apparently made no secret about the upcoming end of The Boys with the cast.

It was a little tidbit of news dropped during a recent panel on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. When asked if the news that The Boys was ending after season five, Colby Minifie, who plays the beleaguered CEO of Vought Ashley in season four, admitted, “We knew for a while.”

Homelander himself, Antony Starr, elaborated, saying, “Yeah, [Eric Kripke] started the show saying that this was always in his head to go five seasons. And, of course… I was sitting there going, ‘Pfft. We’ll see.’” So, from the very beginning, the cast knew that this was going to be a five-season gig – even if the rest of us were kept in the dark.

Thankfully, Starr’s skepticism was unfounded, and The Boys quickly became one of the biggest hits in the Amazon library. Now that season four has come to a close, we just have to wait until the fifth and final season of The Boys hits our screens, and we see what brutal ending Kripke has been planning all this time.

Season four of The Boys is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, with a fifth season confirmed to be in production.

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